Cell phones a way of life, death, amusement in Iraq

2006-08-08 04:00:00 PDT Baghdad -- The cool kids in Iraq all want an Apache, the cell phone they've named after an American military helicopter.

Next on the scale of cell-phone hipness comes a Humvee, followed by the Afendi, a Turkish word for dapper, and a sturdy, rounded Nokia known as the Allawi -- a reference to the stocky former prime minister, Ayad Allawi.

Even more telling are the text messages and images that Iraqis share over their phones. From all over the city, Baghdad cell phones practically shout commentary about Saddam Hussein, failed reconstruction and violence. One of the most popular messages now making the rounds appears onscreen with the image of a skeleton.

"Your call cannot be completed," it says, "because the subscriber has been bombed or kidnapped."

Cell phones have long been considered status symbols in developing countries, Iraq included. But in an environment where hanging out is potentially life threatening, cell phones are also a window into people's dreams and terrors, the macabre local sense of humor and Iraqis' resilience amid the swells of violence and chaos.

The cell-phone business in Iraq is booming. According to figures published last month by the State Department, there are now 7.1 million cell-phone subscribers in Iraq, up from 1.4 million two years ago. In an economy where jobs can be as scarce as rain, billboards for phones are among the only advertisements updated regularly in the capital.

Some Iraqis report spending as much as $800 on phones like the Humvee, and from the rooftops of Sadr City, the poor Shiite district where trash lines the streets, visible cell-phone towers outnumber minarets 15 to 2.

It is the relentless violence -- which now claims dozens of Iraqi lives every day -- that seems to have fertilized the industry's growth.

Insurgents use phones to communicate and to detonate bombs, while Iraqis of all sects rely on their phones to try and avoid danger.

Jabar Satar Salaum, 50, the owner of a cell-phone store on a busy street in the middle-class Shiite area of Karrada, said that he used his phone (a Nokia that is a step up from the Allawi) mostly to tell his wife that he was safe. On the ride to and from work across Baghdad, he said he called to reassure her every few minutes.

Four of the eight stores on Salaum's block sell cell phones, and most have window displays where each phone is covered in plastic. Business is not as good as it was when the store opened eight months ago, Salaum said, but on a recent afternoon, several browsers visited the shop.

Between customers, his sons Amjad, 17, and Muhammad, 15, said that cell phones were desirable not just because they were cool but also because they provided one of the country's only safe forms of teenage self-expression.

The prices the phones command are rather high for Iraq, of course. But with a booming aftermarket in cell phones, people can sell their old ones for nearly the original price and move up to a fancier model. Service is relatively cheap as well, with most people relying on $10 and $20 prepaid cards rather than the more expensive monthly plans.

For human rights workers in Iraq, cell phones play a darker role. Omar al-Jabouri, who heads the human rights office for the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, said he often received pictures of men tortured or killed by death squads, many of them taken with the cell phones of witnesses or the victims' relatives. At bombings, Iraqis are often seen recording the carnage in pictures or short videos.

But mostly, people in Baghdad use their cell phones for commiserating, searching for laughs or trying to knock the powerful off their pedestals. Over the past year, U.S. soldiers, Saddam Hussein and the current Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, have all been the subjects of humorous clips passed from phone to phone.

"In Iraq, there is such an accumulation of frustration," said Fauwzya al-Attiya, a sociologist at Baghdad University. "If an Iraqi does not embrace humor in his life, he's finished."